First look — Jenna Ortega stars in Waititi adaptation of Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun

If it stars Jenna Ortega, you just know it’s going to end up with some kind of horror element, right? Novelist Kazuo Ishiguru gave us gems like Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go, but more recently he delivered his turn on a trope we talk about all the time at borg. Klara and the Sun isn’t about cyborgs, but those creations most confused with borgs. Call them androids, automatons, or good ol’ robots, they become more menacing the more lifelike they appear. At one level most robot stories are a spin on Pinocchio, the marionette who wanted to be a real boy. Every borg and Android story these days should be a cautionary tale. Flip a few words of James Cameron dialogue for Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Terminator could have been a robot instead of a cybernetic organism. In 2026, what is the greatest threat to the world if not the mismanagement of the kind of artificial intelligence that would run these machines?

Ortega plays Klara, the latest extension to the tales of the Fembot of The Six Million Dollar Man, The Stepford Wives, Westworld, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Ex Machina, M3GAN, The Companion, and even Ishiguru’s own Never Let Me Go–maybe even the 1987 movie Mannequin, The Twilight Zone episode “The After Hours,” the latest twist on those famous sci-fi/horror women of Frankenstein and Metropolis. At its best, the robot story touches on classic science fiction themes like those of the British series Humans. Borg stories and advanced robot stories frequently share many story elements, plot points, and tropes. They nearly always include a component of fear of the unknown. So what will director Taika Waititi bring to the table with his adaptation of Klara and the Sun? Here’s a first look: